AoD on a laptop

[Saltynuts]

Few questions about using AoD on a laptop. I have a relatively new, but kinda crappy laptop. When I play AoD, it seems to not fill up the entire screen, but instead just uses just a portion of it (generally there are blank black bars on left and right of the screen). Any ideas on how to fix it?

Also, thinking about getting a new laptop. Any considerations if I want to make sure I can continue to play AoD on it? AoD can use Windows 10 no problem (Windows 8 is in my existing lap top I believe). Anything else to worry about?

Also, I cannot stand playing any game without a mouse. However, I plan to play on the laptop in bed sometimes, and I would guess a mouse is not very popular. Any of you guys use a track ball instead? How do you like it? Any suggestions on this front?

Thanks!

 

[Zsar1]

Cannot reproduce. Menus are limited to 1024 px in width due to legacy code reasons, but the map should properly stretch to fill the screen. Works for me on 1.0[7, 10].

Your new laptop's one important parameter is individual processor core speed (and technically cache size, but they usually do not write that on the spec sheets nowadays).
It also has to have an integrated Intel graphics device: Nvidia integrated chips are not backwards-compatible to DX7 and users reported at least one kind of AMD graphics chip not working at all.

Once I'll have the game running on SDL2, the second paragraph will be irrelevant, but that will take a good long while.

 

[Saltynuts]

Thanks Zsar1! So your second paragraph, if my new laptop has a stand-alone graphics processor (which all high-end ones are I believe), it literally will not work with AoD?

What is SDL2?

Thanks!

 

[Zsar1]

No. My own laptop has an nVidia GeForce 310 M on-board chip. AoD does not properly run on that chip.
Luckily my laptop also has an Intel HD Graphics integrated device. AoD does run on that just fine.

... I am not well versed around hardware, but I think most laptops with an Intel chipset should offer such a device. Not sure about that, just assuming.

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Simple DirectMedia Layer is a graphics library offering abstracted access to 2d rendering functions of DirectX and OpenGL. I am replacing the deprecated DirectDraw rendering with calls to that library to allow AoD to work on modern OSes and modern hardware (such as current nVidia chipsets).
- But that does take a while, because I have a life and a day job to sustain it.